BATON ROUGE — The nation’s number one women’s golf team comes to Baton Rouge this week to take on the LSU Lady Tigers and 11 other teams in the 21st annual LSU/Cleveland Golf Classic at LSU’s University Club.
1. Auburn, last year the runnerup to LSU in the Classic, returns as the No. 1 team in both the GolfWeek/Sagarin performance ratings and the GolfWorld Coaches Poll. They will be the first team to come to Baton Rouge ranked No.1 in the three years the tournament has been held at the U-Club. The last number one women’s team to play in Baton Rouge was Duke in the 1999 LSU-Fairwood Invitational.
The tournament begins on Friday, following practice rounds and a College/Am event on Thursday. The 54-hole tournament runs through Sunday and the Lady Tigers, ranked 15th in the GolfWorld poll, will be trying to become only the second team in tournament history to win the event three consecutive years. Florida State is the only team to date to three-peat in 1987, 1988 and 1989.
Auburn, winner of four tournaments this year with seconds in its other four events, will bring in four of the top 30 golfers in the nation, according to the Sagarin performance index. Senior Courtney Swaim is ranked fourth in the country, with teammates Danielle Downey ranked seventh and Celeste Troche 11th.
This year’s 13-team field includes eight teams ranked in the top 50 of the Sagarin performance charts: Auburn, Vandy, South Carolina, LSU, Tulane, Mississippi State, Alabama and Ole Miss. The rest of the field includes Texas A&M Corpus Christi, Alabama-Birmingham, Birmingham Southern, Augusta State and UNO. The presence of Augusta State for the first time in the event allows former LSU All-SEC golfer Shannon Hanson to return as the head coach of Augusta State.
Besides the three Auburn golfers, 10 of the top 50 golfers in the nation will take part in the event with other golfers expected to contend including Kristy McPherson of South Carolina and United States Women’s Amateur Champion Meredith Duncan of LSU. Duncan, a senior from Shreveport, has two wins this year on the college trail and is coming off a four-round 73rd place finish in the LPGA’s first major of 2002, the Kraft Nabisco Championships.
“We are very excited about the tournament this year for several reasons,” said LSU Coach Karen Bahnsen. “It’s a good field with some outstanding players coming in here. It’s a good final warmup for many of us heading into conference tournaments later in the month and for many of these teams, including the Tigers, we’ll be back here in an even more pressure-packed atmosphere in May for the NCAA East Regional.”
The only question remaining is which University Club course will the teams played. The first year at the course in 2000, strong winds and fast greens made the course difficult at best and sent scores soaring. Last year, with LSU, Auburn and Georgia all at the peak of their games under near perfect conditions, scores were low with LSU winning with a 54-hole total of even par 864. Auburn was second at eight over and Georgia’s 20-over par was a score that would have won many years.
Georgia’s Reilley Rankin put her own mark on the tournament, recovering from a first round 76 to shoot 68-67 to finish at 5-under par 211 to win by two strokes over then LSU senior Katy Harris (-3) and Swaim of Auburn who posted rounds of 72-71-71 – 214. She’s back along with Sarah Johnston of Alabama and Duncan of LSU who tied for fourth at even par 216.
Tee times begin at 8 a.m. each day on hole 10 with the top teams and leaders scheduled to go off hole No. 1 beginning at 9:30 a.m. Admission to the University Club is free. Last year’s event drew some of the largest crowd to watch local college golf and with good weather forecast again this year, tournament officials are hopeful of another good spectator following this time around as well.